Within You, Without You
by drosier
Summary: “What I wanna know,” Drake said, slow and focused, “is just why you let me talk you into things that go against your common sense.” Slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Notes:** This was actually written before I'd seen _Really Big Shrimp_, so it doesn't comply with the movie canon. Also, there _is_ mention of light drug use, though it isn't exactly what it appears to be in the beginning. There _is_ a point to be made. :P

As for reviews: So it probably isn't too nice to flame just because that's how you get your jollies, but ALL constructive crit is welcome and will be taken seriously!

**Disclaimer:** This was written purely for my own enjoyment – no profit made whatsoever. I post it in hopes I may bring a (non-distressing, non-eyeball-charring) light into the lives of a few others! Basically when all is said and done, I don't own Drake & Josh.

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I.

Josh sat like a boneless creature, his long legs set heavy and immobile over the low-seated plush of an old, stuffed recliner.

As far as he was concerned, the two of them were made up of the same inanimate materials - as if he could have been torn into halves and be found to harbor innards composed of parched, cotton-fluff organs and splinter for bones.

Well, if Josh hadn't established by the failed execution of simple movements that bones were _nowhere_ in his body.

"I don't feel anything," Josh said, a fine feat for a self-professed armchair.

"Maybe you need to take another hit."

"No, it's – I mean, I _can't _feel anything," Josh clarified.

"Huh," Drake commented with a superiorly unconcerned shrug.

Drake was straddling the wiry backing of a swiveling desk chair, his jean-clad legs wrapped there like coal-smirched ropes. He nudged the floor lazily, rocking and gliding across the strips of hardwood just before Josh.

As was the way which was utterly Drake Parker, he looked incredibly composed and flawless, arms crossed over the peak of the chair and his sharp chin resting over them. So unfairly, that was all he ever had to do to sweep the ladies off their collective feet.

Except that the only things around with feet happened to be Josh and those sundry pieces of furniture that had been a part of the room since he'd moved in.

"What do you feel?" Josh asked, because considering Drake's small frame, the feeling Josh had that his body had turned from something solid to wisps of drifting smoke must have been coursing tenfold through Drake.

The air conditioning was out, and the atmosphere in the room was of small, sweltering spaces – the closet downstairs during the summer perhaps – and the upper part of Drake's lip where he either nicked himself shaving or his recent tryst with Darcy Pope turned violent was under a glaze of sweat.

Drake snorted in amusement and flicked his head - the tiny red gash flitting elsewhere - so the hair caught in the tiny combs of his eyelashes stuck to his forehead.

"Are you kidding?" he asked, voice laced with sparkling tones of amusement. "I don't smoke that stuff. Drugs aren't cool, man."

Josh was overwrought. "I – you – _not cool_!"

Josh had spent an entire week listening to Drake urgently prattle on about Josh's lumbar problems and the 'healing powers of ganja,' even expertly pretending to consider. But the whole thing was just so _pointless – _even more so than last month's, 'Hey Josh, come over here so I can see who has thicker fingernails' – that Josh had believed Drake's curiosity would pass.

Which lasted right up until the moment Drake actually showed up with his little goodies.

Giving in was a different thing all together then; more like that it was something they would do together, because if Drake was going to try something destructive, Josh was going to be there to offer the parental eye and enforce restrictions.

Also, the fact that Drake'd told him he would be able to scarf down an endless amount of churros had contributed a bit.

Now that he thought about it, though, Drake hadn't even bothered to bring any churros.

"Uh huh," Drake said soberly, disinterested with the amount of consternation he'd caused. "I think that's what I said."

Josh sputtered comprehensively because his indignation over being swindled once again by his step-brother decided to manifest in spittle and monosyllables. He tried standing, but gravity – and Drake – was adept in the practice of being rudely disobliging.

_Especially_ to Josh.

A moment later, Josh was back in the groove he'd made in the chair, gripping the armrests as a heady fog swaddled him.

Rather belatedly he thought he might have bones after all.

Drake, who had glided toward Josh, as smoothly as a prowling cat, pushed down on Josh - _Rude!_ - so that every stretch of Josh's back hit the gold-colored cushions.

Drake's hand was splayed over Josh's chest, those far-spread fingers pulsing and pushing, making their indentations so Josh thought that maybe he wasn't made of splinters after all, but warm clay.

"Hey, relax," Drake said in a tone that suggested a state Josh couldn't possibly achieve because all those years of 'just say no' had been hoodwinked out of him. His brain cells were probably being _fried_.

Josh looked up at Drake, focusing on the wicked smirk that clouded his default come-hither look like smoke under a pane of glass.

"Look, Josh, I knew you were freaking out over your course load and your college aps, and I thought since I have the connections -" He said 'connections' in a sly tone, accompanied by waggling eyebrows. "- then why not? I'd say you – unlike me – are at a low risk for dependency, even in the reckless days of your careful, overachieving, and responsible youth –"

Josh felt himself swell over the recognition: He really did try. "Thanks, man."

"- all true –" Drake said with a lilt before picking up his explanation as if never missing a step, "- and it's only this one time, so I figure, what's the big deal?"

So Drake was trying to throw him off then. It was an outrage, and Josh wouldn't stand for it.

"The big deal," Josh began, but his tongue was slow and leaden, dragging itself like a sodden sandbag over the top of his mouth. In comparison, Drake was the unstoppable flash flood which had come upon him. One sandbag had never been enough.

"See, what I want to know," Drake dragged out with the inflection that let Josh know that the next question wasn't going to be pleasant.

It must have been a really big favor, judging by the lengths Drake had gone. He was grinning down at Josh now, Satan ready to bargain for your soul and so close that the back of his wheely chair was etching its indentation into the front of Josh's recliner.

Josh Nichols would resist, though, stay more resolved than a deep-anchored stone. A deep-anchored stone that was a little woozy, but _however. _

Josh jut his chin and put on his stern face, pretending he wasn't doomed.

Dully he realized that _this_ is where Drake would finally ask him to break Madey Stenson, Josh's study partner in English, so she'd finally agree to go out with Drake.

Josh'd been dreading it for weeks, much in the manner one dreads a trip to the dentist who can charm patients into an unnecessary root canal.

Still, he wanted to scoff.

As if Madey's first words to Drake being, 'I've heard of you. You're the one who causes the saline to flow unhampered in the girl's bathroom for weeks. Away, scumbag!' (All combined with Josh's compliments on her nice use of vocabulary while Drake screws up his face to say, "Ew, pee?") was a portent of eternal love. Or in Drake's case, a week of furious making out.

But being Drake, he was convinced that his charms would work on every girl. He just needed the right hair, opportunity, and mouthwash.

In Josh's opinion, though, Drake didn't have a chance.

Drake hung around the two of them during their study sessions, doodling pictures of himself making out with Madey on the vocabulary cards and puncturing vocabulary flash-offs with giggles over words that 'sounded dirty.'

He'd also constantly complain about how, by common decency, a 'flash-off' should require debauched waves of actual skin-revealing _flashing, _and should in no way involve index cards.

Unless they were pasties, he'd added thoughtfully and to Josh's sheer mortification.

Drake kept up his trend of being ever-so discomfiting and _didn't_do this.

"What I wanna know," Drake said, slow and focused, "is just _why _you let me talk you into things that go against your common sense." He then concluded with a haughty clearing-of-throat, believing himself to be clever.

Well _that _Josh would just have to deny, because if not - Jesus, Drake would just think that he had a one-up on Josh he'd be able to use to wheedle anything from him.

Drake _did_, of course. Have that one-up on Josh. But for the preservation of all that was good and holy, Drake did not need to know that.

Drake was looking expectantly at Josh, though; Josh realized that from somewhere in between the moment and that distressing thought.

"I –I _don't – _splagrahhh," Josh intoned dramatically, trailing off in a decided semblance of a valid explanation.

The Beatles were dragging their way over the expanse of the room in a meld of rippling sound and scattered melody, and there were more pressing matters at hand such as _Drake's_ hand, which seemed to have fused itself into Josh's chest.

"You don't splagrah?" Drake asked incredulously, clearly enjoying himself.

In Josh's defense, or a terrible attribute of his complaisant nature, he was unaware of just _why _Drake has such a hold over him. It had always just been that way, so that long before they became step-brothers and before he even knew Drake's name, he was lodging finger foods into his sinuses just to impress him.

But either way, Drake lived in a way that Josh had never dared to live before Drake entered the carefully folded fabric of Josh's existence.

Perhaps Josh wanted to feel a connection to that same plane where Drake lived – a one toe in the water, the rest of your body fettered to dry land kind of connection, because Josh still wanted to get into a good college and know that when he laid down to go to sleep for the night, his grammy wouldn't be too horrified to know what he had done that day.

Drake broached Josh's thoughts, leaning forward, his knee pushing itself farther into Josh's thigh, and placed a finger over Josh's temple.

"You're writing an essay in there," Drake said with a smirk. The heat made his voice sound like old, dried bone. "Just say it," he urged quietly, and Josh almost missed it.

Josh moved his eyes lower because that tiny, bloodied chasm seemed to undulate with Drake's every word, and really, why he hadn't put a band-aid over it was beyond him, but he instead got the gleaming base of Drake's throat.

Some wretched noise surfaced from the back of Josh's throat, and he expelled a long breath, because if he couldn't speak, the least he could do was _breathe._

And Drake pushed through his exhalation as if it were a corporeal thing and kissed Josh full on the mouth.

It wasn't anything like when Josh kissed him on his birthday, which was a rash and unreciprocated (not to mention stiff) motion born of exhilarating, Oprah-related circumstance. Drake was calculating and most pliant, Drake was…kissing him.

"Wait – _wait_," Josh breathed fervently against Drake's mouth.

Josh stood abruptly and pushed Drake backwards, maybe a tad bit too hard. The chair went with him, but instead of tipping over, Drake ended up passenger on a contraption making its way across the floor. It stopped after a couple of feet, when hitting the shelved and clutter-strewn wall. _Hard_.

Drake then had the audacity to just _stare_ at him.

"Now I _know_," Josh exclaimed, "that I didn't just give you tickets to see Oprah."

"'Course not," Drake said while playfully screwing up his face and flicking his hand with a distrait air. "Oprah's your thing, man."

Josh stared, and Drake's grin gained more flashes of teeth by the second before Josh began gesticulating madly and ended the whole tumultuous whirl of by appendages by thrusting a finger toward Drake. "That's not what I meant; you are taking advantage of a befuddled man!"

Josh then actually swayed - _not_ swooned, because that would be _wrong _- and seeing the way Drake's pupils were dilated from the heat, wondered if he had perhaps lost his mind, the gray matter escaping from the top of his head rather than body heat.

During those weeks just before Madey, Drake had twice as many girls wrung around him (more tautly than nooses by the looks of things) right up until she began coming over after school to study with Josh. A terrible dry spell then passed over Drake's agenda.

Josh had first thought Drake had contracted mono, what with the way he was moping.

That is, only until he remembered the time he and Josh had bet on who could get more dates, and Drake couldn't go through with it because of his feelings for Carly.

The doodles on the index cards had then gotten progressively more explicit as the days went by, and Josh thought that maybe Drake really liked this girl. Josh had thought it was kind of sweet then, albeit highly disruptive to Josh's valued Sanctuary Of Learning.

Now Josh also thought that Drake was probably some type of _sex addict,_ and it would, in fact, be better for him to keep up with his shocking girl-a-day regime. Surely this was what happened when Drake Parker was going through _withdrawals._

"Look, Josh," Drake said, standing from his chair and kicking it off to the side. His shoulders were as stiff as boards, and he was watching Josh with the wary eye of an attack dog victim, the only way Josh_ knew_ that Drake wouldn't abruptly pounce. "I've been thinking –"

Josh decided it was a good time to bolt. He started over to the door while crying out, a bit too frantically: "And _this _must be why you don't do _that_ often!" He then waved his hands in a way he hoped would shape disaster.

"Josh -"

Josh walked up the stairs, frantically grasping for the doorknob, but his hand slipped due to the perspiration pooled over his palms. Unfortunately, Josh thought, his body hadn't yet received the memo, and a painful head-to-door reaction ensued.

Josh's hands went out to cradle the spot on his forehead that'd probably be blooming with color tomorrow and heard Drake shuffling to his side. "_Don't_," he snarled.

In between song breaks, a muffled spell of shrieking laughter drifted from the floor below.

Very suddenly, Josh realized that perhaps Drake _had _thought this through.

Their parents were downstairs with his –_ their_ – Dad's boss, a gathering the two boys had been urged to give a wide berth to, and if Josh left the room, someone may have been able to catch trappings of his intoxication just by the state of his _deceitful eyeballs._

His options were confined to their room. That is, if he knew what was good for him, and in being Josh Nichols, knowing what was good for him was carried over in his genes.

Josh began to pace.

Focused as he was on the floor, out the corner of his eye, he saw Drake making the failed gestures of one trying to gather the words to what could be the most disastrous speech in the history of disastrous speeches.

"You know," Josh began vehemently, because if he did, Drake couldn't, "you can't just go and – there's a thing called a personal bubble, and when a lady says, 'No' –" At this the two stopped to gaze at each other in intense confusion before Josh erratically continued, "Dude, I'm your _brother! _These are inappropriate actions. _Inappropriate!_ 'Hug me, brotha,' wasn't meant that way!" Josh said desperately, pleading with himself as much as with Drake.

"_Step-_brothers!" Drake said, and his voice broke. He stepped toward Josh with a hand partially extended to him as if to beckon a frighten creature into his palm, as if _Josh_ were the insane one, and Josh wondered just how Drake could turn things around even at a time like this. Outraged, he took a step back. "OK, Josh. Look, man –"

"Yeah, you _bet _I'm lookin'!" Josh said. "I'm keepin' an eye on_ you_!" He emphasized this point by thrusting a finger in Drake's direction.

Drake winced.

Josh was brutally satisfied.

"Boys!"

A sharp knock came from the other side of the door, and evermore quickly than it had mounted, the tension in the room teetered over, not quite into oblivion, but encompassing something very different all together.

On instinct, he turned toward Drake and saw his exact feelings echoed in his trepidatious stare.

"Just a minute, Walter!" Drake sang out, eyes still on Josh.

As if he'd been preparing for this his entire life, he bolted over the sofa to gather his illicit playthings and erratically shoved them into his desk drawer, leaving not even a ghost of any of it.

All the while, Josh pat his clothing in a desultory manner, trying for a semblance of composure and getting essence of accomplished hobo.

"I thought you said they wouldn't bother us tonight," Josh said, low and dizzying in his franticness. "Oh man, I'm _dead_ – Dad's gonna _murder me_ and serve my body as entrees to his boss, and I won't even taste good because I'm _tainted_!" Josh's voice raised a pitch for every step Drake ran toward him, ending disconcertingly high considering Drake was running and thus taking what were more like leaps.

Once in front of Josh, he tried to swat Josh's hands into a still position which wouldn't make Josh look so insane. This very nearly caused a hissy girl slap fight.

To end all motion, he took Josh's face in his hands.

Josh flinched.

"Josh, _listen_ to me," he said slowly, gripping too tight and leaning in too close. His eyes, though, were bright and sincere. "I'm going to take care of it."

An involuntary shriek, possibly not too reassuring, surfaced from Josh at the words.

Earning a certain level of Josh's admiration, Drake seemed unfazed. "I want you to let me do all the talking," Drake said, to which Josh whimpered a bit but then nodded frantically because Drake now had an evil glint in his eye. "Alright," Drake confirmed, and he pat Josh on the cheek, looking him over twice before lunging coolly toward the door.

He touched the metal of the knob, opening it a chink before he abruptly slammed it against Dad's confused protests, and - what seemed before he'd even turned around - made a running leap over the sofa and to the desk.

Josh raised an eyebrow in inquiry. In response, Drake picked up an aerosol can and sprayed something that smelled of flowers and immediately brought Josh to a state of near-suffocation. Drake then took a moment to get a pleasant whiff of what Josh thought could very well be poison and sighed contently before leaping back over the sofa (quite unnecessarily) and back to the door.

All of this left Josh feeling as if he were in a snow globe that had just been tipped on end.

"Stand over there," Drake hissed, waving Josh - who was choking around the unholy burning in his nostrils - off to the side. After straightening his t-shirt and flicking his hair from his eyes, Drake opened the door, just as Dad began to knock once again.

"_Hey_, Walter," Drake said with a giddy and untrustworthy lilt, as if he lived for these moments, and he leaned himself heavily against the doorframe. "What up, man?"

Dad's hand was raised as if preparing to knock once more, and he quickly dropped it to his side while fabricating a more stern countenance.

"_Drake_," he greeted suspiciously, dragging the word out too long. "I need you and Josh to help me out in the kitchen with the Prussian desserts. I really need this to go well, and they're Mr. Galloway's favorites. Your mom's got Mrs. Galloway so into the stories of the Chinese fire ants she had as pets when she was a kid that I'd hate to break it up. So if you would," he concluded, making sure that he and Drake knew what 'if you would' meant exactly: 'Do it now. You have no choice.'

Drake flashed him a hundred-watt grin. "We'll be right on it, Dad."

Dad raised an eyebrow at hearing Drake call him 'Dad' and darted his eyes dubiously from Drake to Josh, because Drake being pointedly respectful either meant that he'd laid out the path to their dooms or he was standing over the trappings of some evildoing. Apparently Dad decided that he couldn't pin anything on them - _yet _- and turned on his heel, descending the stairs.

As Dad's head bobbed farther away, like a balloon suspended on a string, Josh realized that he was still clasping his hands together and smiling so wide there would probably be some nerve damage.

"You all right, man?" Drake asked, concern making his voice thin.

Josh looked toward Drake, whose eyes sparkled with the misty sheen of a martyred orphan, and only then did it occur to him once again to be angry with his brother.

It was Drake's fault. It was Drake's fault _again_, and it was up to Josh to fix it on his own, just like _everything_ Drake was involved with: Josh took the fall and Drake lounged about to pleasantly take it all in with his tea and biscuits.

"I don't know, Drake," Josh said, and he pushed roughly past him, stopping to say too close to his face: "If I was, how would you screw it up this time?"

With that, Josh descended the stairs as if he were making his way to the electric chair.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes: **Apologies for the over-long waiting period. I haven't died! Well, at least no more than my soul. Real Life just came over one day and decided to slap me across the face with a purse full of bricks. It was my own purse, too. I call that rude. But I'm back! This chapter was also being particularly difficult; I must have rewritten it about five times, so _any_ feedback would be wildly appreciated.

On that, I bestow an enormous **thank you** upon everyone who has read and reviewed so far.

**Disclaimer: **This was written purely for my own enjoyment – no profit made whatsoever. I post it in hopes I may bring a (non-distressing, non-eyeball-charring) light into the lives of a few others. Basically when all is said and done, I don't own Drake & Josh.

**II.**

Downstairs was too bright and too full of hollow laughter. It had to be a good fifteen degrees cooler, though, a fact that Josh didn't let slip by unappreciated: he breathed in the crisp air, swallowed it greedily as if it were an almost-tangible turning-point.

Once reaching the bottom step of the staircase and carefully setting his last foot onto the stone-tiled floor as if he expected it to yowl like a startled cat, Josh poked his head around the wall, craning his neck as far as he could. Squinting dramatically, he could just see the bright heads of Mom and Mrs. Galloway bobbing together in agreement.

Josh grasped the wall and leaned out farther to see if he could spot Dad. He was practically clutching it with the tips of his fingernails, but if he just got another inch – well, apparently he'd lose his grip on the wall and be hurled out into the hallway where he was _exposed._ He knew this because it was what just happened.

Josh quickly looked back at the staircase and then the kitchen door, and scrambling frantically for either destination, he found that going in two opposite directions at once gets you _nowhere._

He stopped and looked around, placing his hands in a few places – behind his head, at his sides, on the wall, at his ankles – to gain some semblance of composure. All that and no one was looking in his direction, so he took in a breath to puff out his chest and tip-toed toward the kitchen in a stealthy sort of stiff-backed, beeline. He was about five feet away when Mom abruptly halted in her conversation, turning an inquiring gaze to him.

"Oh, Josh?"

_This _was it: he was going to be so busted in two shakes of a lamb's tail. Or more like in the last dying twitch of a hopelessly infected lamb's tail.

Josh stiffened and (there was no other word for it, unfortunately) squeaked as he turned his face away, attempting to give as infinitesimal a view of his expression as possible. Mom and Dad would be able to see right through him, and when they found out what he had just _done _upstairs, their reaction would be something like the audience's who witnessed Blaine Darvey turning that three-year-old inside-out: shocked, appalled, and _very _angry. This offense transcended to a deeper betrayal, to something he hadn't considered before.

Or well, he had. But _Drake._

Though as it turned out, the only thing that happened then was that Mom, in a distractedly cheery way, said "The recipe's on the fridge. Thank you, boys, so much for doing this." Josh could hear the words shifting through her wide smile like powdered sugar and he was suddenly struck with a horrible pang of guilt.

He definitely couldn't turn to her, not now that he knew he would see her grateful face shining back at him, so Josh instead struggled to achieve a stance that said, "I am the embodiment of composed obedience." Drake would have probably called it twitching, especially as Josh tried to fix his eyes away from anything that had sight itself, but then Drake didn't know a whole lot about getting along with adults. Somehow, though, Josh felt that the well containing his charm over adults had begun to run dry as soon as he started to listen to Drake.

Josh was on something like Stance #6 which said, "This young man eats _all _his vegetables without being told" when his gaze became hooked like a caught fish on the picture in front of him. There were several mass-produced paintings - olive silhouettes of palm trees - positioned around the doorway leading into the kitchen. The corner of the picture frame on the upper space of the left hand wall was widely chipped, dull gold paint cracking and appearing to curl back to reveal chalky white innards, like the flesh of a crisp apple. Josh didn't remember quite so clearly _how_ that chip had gotten there as who had done it and later, who was actually blamed for it.

A swell of resentment welled from inside of him like a bitter taste in his mouth as, distantly, he heard Mom reengage herself in another tale of ant debauchery. He wanted to say, "Don't thank Drake. Drake hasn't even come downstairs yet. Drake doesn't care if Dad doesn't get this promotion, and Drake doesn't care who he uses." But oddly, what he most wanted to say right then was, "It was really Drake who chipped that picture frame."

But of course, Josh didn't. Josh couldn't. So Josh said, "Sure Mom." For his voice to sound any more downtrodden, he'd have to have been under a truck.

Which must have actually been true because Mom cut off a story about the time her ants made off with Francois the family goat to ask, "Josh, are you alright?"

"Alright?" he mumbled, false and forced lilt not quite able to break into his voice. To make up for it, he added an extensive array of hand gestures. "Yeah, um, fit as a fladoodle! I'm just uh, listening to you two shoot the breeze, and uhm….wishing I were there to witness the innocence and simplicity of the older generations. Not that you're old and simple!" he amended quickly and laughed lightly. He then turned around and lightly nudged Mrs. Galloway's shoulder with his fist, to which she stared at the spot with distaste. Josh quickly stepped back and turned, looking around. "You're young, complex, nubile –" He cut off, taking a moment to gag over his shoulder at that last statement.

Josh got the sense he was out of control now, mostly indicated in the way he was nodding with every word, more fervently than an excited tot would bounce on his toes. As if lost in a whirlwind, there were flashes of Mom squinting at him in confusion, much in the way she did when Josh did what Drake called "spazzing out." He felt the throbbing of his pulse in his ears now, which was surely at a higher level than anyone was ever supposed to feel their pulse without the pressing of fingers.

"What in the world are you talking about?" Mom interrupted sometime after Josh had even stopped listening to himself.

Josh opened his mouth and gurgled a bit, a noise which was cut away savagely by Mrs. Galloway's sweet voice. "There are the teenage years for you," she said, soft but surprisingly forceful. "If it were up to _me,_ _my_ _babies_ would _stay_ babies forever. This one can't even bear to look at you now that he's in the throes of post-puberty."

Josh took a moment look truly horrified for the benefit of the wall before him. Because really, _ew._ Not in front of his _mom!_

"Now that's not true. Josh is a good kid," Mom said almost mournfully to Mrs. Galloway before she turned to Josh. "Now what's the matter? Were you up all night studying again - "

The rest of her maternal questioning pummeled past him in incomprehensibility, her concerned voice mangled by his guilt and then suddenly fear when he heard the low and steady voices of Dad and Mr. Galloway's discussion dissipate.

Josh really wished he could think now since he kind of required that ability in order to say his prayers. He had all of three seconds to live, and he was going to die looking at pictures of _palm trees_.

Apparently his sense of hearing was finely intact, mocking him in truly magnified volumes: clearer than anything, he heard the heavy-footed steps of someone bounding wildly down the stairs.

When those footsteps stopped a few feet behind Josh, there was silence and then: "Drake, can you at least_ try_ to be a little quieter next time?" Dad admonished.

All Mom needed was an exasperated, "_Drake_."

And it was _about time,_ Josh thought.

"If he were my baby, I'd make him go back up and do that again," Mrs. Galloway confided in a loud whisper, clinging to the chance to talk about parenting like a madwoman rushing to squeeze between the elevator doors when it was clear the world was pointedly _not _holding them open for her.

"Baby?" Drake asked, clearly amused, and Josh felt a prick of curiosity rearrange his facial expression at Drake's lazy insolence. "The girls who call me baby are usually –"

"Drake," Dad warned shortly. "Get into the kitchen."

"Sure thing, Walter," Drake said, and Josh thought that for that tone, he must have been saluting. And knowing Drake, it was with the wrong hand.

After that, Dad was talking again. Josh let out a relieved breath and made to move when there was a familiar hand on his back, making him freeze. It was more like he was being shoved really, but it was just _that hand_, pushing into the spot between his shoulder blades. It was pushing just like it had right before...

"What in the world is the matter with you two?" Mom asked as Josh felt himself start.

"The air conditioner's out upstairs!" Drake said quickly and in his you-don't-know-how-much-I-suffer voice. He started pushing on Josh again, but for some reason Josh felt soldered to the stone-tiled floor as his mind watched the scene in horror. Maybe he'd lost all mobile function as a side effect of being Drake's little experiment. Maybe - "He's just a little out of it. We're getting three degrees burns up there!"

"_Third degree_," Josh hissed absently. There was a small comfort; he was still OK if he could reprimand Drake.

"Yeah, that," Drake agreed dismissively. "Come on, Josh, walk it off." When he began again, he'd taken a new direction. "But um, while we're talking about the heat: Mom, why don't you tell everyone that awesome story you used to tell me when I was a kid. You know, about the time your ants had _babies." _Josh could just_ feel_ Mrs. Galloway perk up at that. Drake seemed to perk up too: he was talking more animatedly than when he'd described the adventures he'd had on Robbie's sit-and-bounce. "Remember how you said you thought newborn babies needed heat and so you put the babies in the oven and _the babies shriveled up and died_?"

Josh turned to face the room then.

But that was in startled response to the blood-curdling scream that ripped through the air right behind the phrase "the babies shriveled up and _died_."

Josh thanked his lucky stars for Mrs. Galloway. Everyone's attention was now directed toward her like passersby to a train wreck. Mother Extraordinaire, it seemed, went into shrill and awful fits at the retelling of horrific baby stories, and it seemed six-legged insects in nappies were no exception.

"Drake!" Mom cried, scandalized. She turned back to Mrs. Galloway with a hand over her heart. "Oh Liza! Are you alright? I didn't – was it - Oh, they were only little fireants!" was what came confusedly from Mom's mouth.

Josh's head was throbbing, but now thoroughly relived, he took this chance to make what he hoped wasn't too much of a spasmodic, wide-armed lunge as a leisurely stroll into the kitchen.

When he looked back over his shoulder to get a last glimpse of the damage, Mr. Galloway had moved from to the big chair by the fireplace to the sofa to rub circles into Mrs. Galloway's back, an expression of exasperated familiarity on his face. But it was Dad, who seemed to be cringing into himself even as he pushed his way past Mom and awkwardly tried to help, who really caught Josh's attention.

Dad had put so much preparation into this night and now he was sputtering in the spaces he was left within: "Bring yourself back into the room," said in a monotone which was probably as close as Mr. Galloway got to soothing. "Remember what Dr. Schweiber said, dear. You can't save the world. Soothing breaths now. _Walter!_ Get that dinner roll out of my wife's face, if you_ please_."

And the chaos which was going to set him back was all to save Josh's neck.

Josh turned back and went into the kitchen, walking straight to the refrigerator and not even stopping to take an in-depth inventory of all those insanely appealing confectionery treasures Mom had strewn about the counter. Most of the ingredients were things Josh didn't even recognize, though, and that tipped any reality of him completing this task in his state to inaccessible.

Really, Jell-O could be the epitome of class with just the right molds. There was absolutely _no need_ for Mr. Galloway to require desserts from an empire that didn't even _exist_ anymore.

Though there it was, that garish pink piece of paper, bright as a red alert and fixed firmly over the surface of the refrigerator. The recipe.

Once he was at the refrigerator and after he had asked himself _three times_ how many times he'd passed the stove-top counter, Josh got a handle on the static-stuck corners of the recipe and pulled. As soon as he did, a crack to rival the sound levels of a sonic boom reverberated from behind him, and the recipe was a different kind of inaccessible.

He made a good show of swiping about and flailing wildly as it fled his clutches to touch-down in some nondescript location among the kitchen things; his heart pounded hard against his ribs, begging to make a similar exit because his first thought was, _Oh my god,_ _Mrs. Galloway's gone insane and shot Mom!_ Heady and frazzled, he made to _take action._

"Don't worry, Mom! I'm – Drake!" Josh cried out on a high note, halting with his finger thrust into the air. When he turned around, he found a very different scene than he had expected.

"You, _Drake_?" Drake asked in an arrogant tone that seemed somewhat halfhearted. "More like _you wish_." He stood before the now-closed, white-paneled shutters that kept the living room private from the kitchen. His hands were in his pockets, and he looked infuriatingly unfazed – or would have if his stance didn't suggest he was leaning away from Josh.

Which Josh could live with for now. Anything that was an indicator that Drake wasn't about to try turning the kitchen into their Den of Sin was OK with him. Anyway, there wasn't time. Dad only had him to count on now.

Josh still hadn't spoken, and for once Drake noticed something outside of himself and asked, "Whoops, I didn't startle you, did I?"

"Nuh-uh," said Josh, relaxing his stance. "See, I was just projecting ahead to the future when I'd turn Mom's recipe into a paper airplane. _Whoops._ Looks like I got a little too ahead of myself there!" He ended on a wild note which had Drake's eyes wide and his hands making beseeching gestures. The message was clear: _be quiet._

"Look, there's no need to get all sarcastic," he huffed. He then made a wide sweeping motion with his hands and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm trying to help you out."

Josh scowled. "Big of you. Now let's just get this over with before Mom and Dad come in to see what's taking so long."

Drake's usual wounded look came out all wrong then, like there was something stirred in - a cool determination that had Josh feeling inexplicably nauseous. Or perhaps that was just the drugs.

Yes, it was the drugs.

"Alright man, just – " Drake said and then concluded his statement with a jerk of his head that indicated the spot by Josh's feet.

Glancing down, Josh saw a stain of bright, ironed-out pink splashed over the incongruous gray of the floor. The recipe hadn't gone far at all.

He bent down at once, keeping one eye suspiciously soldered to the spot where the dark blue denim was fading over Drake's left knee – because he didn't _know _what was up, wasn't sure anymore – as he splayed a hand over the paper, dragging both ends toward the center and arching it under his palms.

He stopped then, almost startled, when straightening himself up. It wasn't anything really, but – well, _Drake_. Josh didn't have an arsenal of reactions for when Drake was acting so weird because, unlike Josh, Drake _never _got weird. At least not like now. Now he seemed to be suspended in half-reaching toward Josh in that beckoning-a-wounded-creature way, something that Josh now thought was probably subconscious. He was probably just reaching for the recipe, and that wasn't what really bothered Josh anyway or even the way Drake's other hand was gripping the tiles of the countertop as if it were anchoring him back.

No, it was that for the first time in a long time, Josh _seriously_ questioned Drake's motives. All he knew was that whatever Drake was up to, whatever _it_ meant, Josh was sure that after what had happened upstairs, Drake couldn't care. Drake wasn't _allowed _to care, though he was making a pretty good show of it.

"Um," Josh said profoundly, straightening his back and shaking off his thoughts like drops of acrid water. He then glanced at the recipe to find a myriad of neat little letters all trying their dandiest not to make sense. "I guess we start off with the extract of drakon weed."

Drake walked around to rifle through what was on the kitchen counter, grossly disregarding the fragility of each imported delicacy.

After what was a whole knuckle-biting minute of abuse, Drake spoke. "Uh," he dragged out, looking between two small brown bottles. "I only see oldton seed and pnalten seed extracts."

Josh trudged toward the counter, pushing his palms into his closed eyelids, paper crinkling between his fingers.

Upon closer inspection of the two bottles, Josh concluded that Drake was, against all odds, correct. He shoved the offending paper into Drake's grasp.

To this Drake did a spectacular impression of a fish out of water. "Dude, you know I'm not good with _directions,_" he said, the word "directions" twisted through a grimace, as if it were something particularly bitter he had to get off his tongue.

"Yeah, but you said you would take care of it." Josh shoved the paper further into Drake. Drake looked down at it as if his mind were flashing "does not compute" and then back up at Josh with distaste.

Then, running his hand along his face in a weary gesture, Drake said, "Yeah. Yeah, OK." He then uncrossed his arm and took the paper from Josh's hand.

Josh gladly relinquished the hold he had on his breath and sagged fully against the kitchen sink with the feeling he had just released several birds caged within his chest into the air.

Heaving a great sigh that seemed the diametrical opposite to Josh's, Drake slapped the recipe down onto the counter. With a lazy elbow on the surface, he leaned so far over that the auburn tips of his hair reached down to nearly sweep across the bright paper like thousands of wispy fingers.

After a few moments of gazing incredulously from the recipe to the mountain of ingredients to the crystal bowl, as if wondering how he was going to get everything on the table to fit inside of it, Drake began a productive-looking amount of rifling.

At least – and this was at the very least – Drake seemed to genuinely want to help. It was then that Josh thought, _Well, this could turn out to be OK. _Now if he could just compose himself for a few minutes –

"Hey, Josh," Drake said, and when Josh looked at him, he realized that Drake had already began fashioning a tragically doomed delicacy. "What does 'whisk' mean? 'Cause the only whisking I've done is with the ladies, and -"

What had he been_ thinking?_

"Oh, give me that!" Josh said ardently, swiping the recipe which was close enough to Drake's face that Josh thought, any closer, and he'd have gotten a nasty paper cut across the retina.

"Dude!" Drake cried meaningfully. He was staring at Josh incredulously now, nostrils flaring slightly. "I said I could handle it!"

Josh scoffed. "Yeah, and you were doing such a great job, what with the way your batter looks like diseased lapdogs got sick in it."

It wasn't a lie. And to top it all off, the concoction smelled that way, even with the way Josh was leaning back warily on his heels.

"The thing said it was malodor," Drake said, giving his batter a look as if it were eyeing one of his girlfriends. "That's probably why. Those foreign embassies don't have strict enough restriction on what goes out of their countries. Remember that time Megan ordered that perfume that ate away at your skin, and -"

"_Malodor_," Josh enunciated slowly, close to Drake's face so Drake could see his mouth framing the words and so Josh could see if Drake was fazed by the blunder, "means a foul odor. _Not _ordered though the post! That's _mail-ordered_!"

Drake stared blankly back. Josh calmly handed him the recipe, muttering his thanks as he grabbed an unused spatula and swiped Drake over the head with it, disturbing the composure of his hair. Drake's hands came up to swarm around his head like bees protecting their hive, and he shot Josh an indignant stare.

"Dude!" he said while flattening his already-flattened hair, because he had no range on his expressions. "What was that for?"

"That," Josh said, swiping the recipe from Drake one last time, "is for doing whatcha do." Because that really ought to cover it.

He turned immediately back to his bowl and placed the spatula in the batter. He _could_ handle it by himself. Drake was just a hindrance, a _menace_; he saw that now. After fumbling a bit, Josh poured the contents of a silver flask into the mess.

_Which was a mistake_, Josh decided as the entire thing blossomed into a small – but _alarming _– malodorous inferno.

This caused some alarmed shrieking (shrieking that Josh couldn't exactly pinpoint as his or Drake's through the chaos) and Josh's reflexes to decide that knocking the spatula from the bowl – and _hard _– with a swinging appendage was the way to go. The bowl was upset, spilling a river of growing green flames onto the countertop. Not only that, but with thanks to the spatula collision, a flaming globule was reaching spectacular heights somewhere behind them.

Before Josh could really think, he felt his back hit the kitchen sink, and he was automatically reaching for Drake's familiar and always reciprocated grasp. For that moment, they gaped upon the horrible carnage – this time in form of Mom's kitchenware – they'd caused in a terrible vigil. It was only proper.

The spell was broken after a second, probably by the way one of the tiny packets on the counter burst into a tiny white-powdered spark explosion. Soon after, Josh caught Drake leaving his peripheral vision, and it suddenly occurred to him to _do something._

Unfortunately, that something was to take whatever was in his grasp – right now it was a head of lettuce, and he had _no idea_ where it had come from – and pound it down furiously over the flames. Repeatedly.

Drake reappeared then, the harbinger of a long stream of stark-white paper towels which were still attached to the roll on the other counter so that the effect was something like a plane streaming a message across the sky. The message, Josh realized, was that Drake planned on bringing it down over the flaming mess.

"_No!_" Josh hissed as a row of interconnected paper towels went up in flames. The lettuce he was holding slipped wildly as he dodged a flaming sheet, and Drake shrieked as a wave of greenish goop splashed his arm.

"_Oh my –_" Drake ground out before Josh lunged to clamp his hand over Drake's mouth, dragging them both until their backs hit the sink again.

"_Don't you dare_," Josh hissed. He stayed that way for a moment to make sure Drake wasn't going to say anything before, quite ridiculously, he realized the touching might be a bad idea. He dropped his hand from Drake's mouth and pushed him away, almost too violently, though Drake was apparently too much in pain to notice his vehemence. He began groaning pathetically, but Josh put up a stern finger. "Eh! Mom and Dad are still out there."

"It _burns_," Drake whined.

"Really?" Josh asked sarcastically. "Thanks for letting me know that things that are aflame burn! I'll take that up in the Science Fair this year, and it'll be the _glorious occasion_ when I finally beat out Mindy Crenshaw! Thanks for practically handing me the trophy, Drake! Oh, and I forgot to mention_ what the heck were you thinking_?"

"You're supposed to clean spills with paper towels!" Drake whined indignantly, still clutching his arm.

"Not spills that're _aflame_!" Josh said in exasperation. "Again. _What were you thinking_?"

"Ok, ok," Drake said shortly as he dodged another tiny explosion. "I got it. What I'm not going to have soon is my arm." Most of the countertop was under bright flames now, the tiny whirlpools of fire spreading to most of the thin paper packages and causing more small explosions.

"Again with the talking," Josh intoned dramatically, throwing his hands out as he went to the faucet and grabbed the nozzle, bringing out the hose.

That's when his world blossomed into a violent flush of _pain_. The globule he had flung moments ago had landed on his shoulder.

Josh was sure his eyes rolled back in his head as he gaped and jerked about in horror before his knees gave out hard. Around him, the hose he was clutching created a tiny, unhelpful shower.

Drake moved toward him, trudging like a troop to a fallen comrade, nearly slipping to his knees as he tried to get closer, and Josh tried to decide through an unintelligible blur of sheer pain whether to use the water on himself or the countertop, which was spilling over with what looked like molten liquid. Of course, he had to be able to move first.

"Josh!" Drake said with the most controlled franticness Josh had ever heard. "Stop watering the floor, will ya? In case you haven't noticed, the kitchen's gonna burn down!"

Josh nodded, his head moving like cold jelly and his mouth still agape as he pushed himself up and immediately ended up back on the floor. When he tried grabbing the sink for support he gained a pain in his hand to match nicely with the one on his shoulder. After that, he just went for the easy route and gave a short yell of pain.

"Sh! Mom and Dad'll hear you!" Drake scolded, as if Josh needed reminding. "Now hose down that counter before we're_ really _in trouble." He illustrated this point by flicking his hand in that direction, and oh how Josh did _not _want to look there. Then, when all Josh could do was gape at his bright pink and blistering hand with bulging eyes: "Gimme that!"

Drake grabbed the hose from Josh and turned it back on him, and had it been any other situation, Josh would have been so much less than grateful for being sprayed with a kitchen hose.

The cool liquid washed across Josh's skin like the first showers after a drought for about a second until Drake turned the hose on himself before finally washing down the stovetop counter.

x-X-x

"That was insane," Josh said in a coolly contemplative voice. He watched dully as a polluted stream of mixed whites, yellows, and purples curled across the floor. Powder or ash wafted about in somber clouds as thick, multi-colored liquids and soggy paper towels spilled over the countertops. And that was only what Josh could see from where he was still crouched by the sink.

"You know what I think's insane?" Drake asked incredulously and still a bit too frazzled. He had collapsed about a foot away from Josh when he had finished hosing down the bags of flour. "I can't believe they would eat something that could _explode_. _That's _insane."

"Heh. Foreign embassies," Josh provided as numb explanation, tribute to Drake's rant just a couple of minutes before Disaster.

Or Disaster No. 1, because Disaster No. 2, it seemed, was headed right toward them at that moment.

"Uh huh," Mom's voice drifted sweetly toward the door, threatening as a charging bull. He and Drake were waving the proverbial red flag. "But one time I owned one with only _five_ legs. Yes! I'll be right back, Liza; let me just check on how my boys are doing in here."

The two perked up, and after a shared, wide-eyed glance, made a mad dash to the kitchen door.

Mom was already half through, her back holding the door ajar as she concluded a snippet of conversation, and after slipping over the wet floor, he and Drake were just too slow to reach her in time and too sprawled out on the ground to block out her sight of the kitchen.

Josh shot up fast and grabbed the closest thing on the counter, which was that stupid head of lettuce. _Again. _

"We're almost done!" Josh said frantically and all smiles. "I just have to chop this lettuce, and we're good to go!" The head of lettuce disintegrated in his hand. Josh shrieked and flicked it into a puddle which actually sizzled menacingly and caught fire.

Mom disregarded this, and even as Drake stood up to present the second easy, battle-wounded target stomping down on a flaming head of mutilated lettuce, she just gaped.

Though it wasn't the standard-issue gape; her face said, _I can't believe you did it again_, even though he and Drake do it _every time_. It was as if today could have been that shining day when all went well, and now all of her hopes had been drowned, more heartbreaking than a leukemic kitten.

"What _happened_ to my kitchen," she asked tragically, taking ownership of it now that it was broken. "_Oh! _And what did you boys do to that batter?"

"_Psh_, batter is right!" Drake said, rubbing his arm piteously. Josh stuck his elbow into Drake's wet side.

Mom still hadn't surfaced from her silent embolism, and Josh thought that it was perhaps the way their batter was now a coiling river which was fizzing around her good shoes like a surly snake.

A tray and a few pieces of her good china rested precariously in Mom's slackening grip, and Josh stepped forward, trying to reach for the wares in a manner that was not so noticeably erratic.

Mom seemed to come to and snatched the china a few inches back, clutching her wares to her chest like a very odd teddy bear which more resembled a dilapidated house.

Oddly she said, in hushed tones, "What am I going to do about dessert?"

"Uh, Mom?" Drake inquired, incredulity apparent in every touch of his voice. "Take it from the ones who were _burned_ when it made contact with our flesh, alright. You do_ not_ want that to have any contact with your internal organs whatsoever."

"No, you don't understand," she said, setting the tray over a piece of lettuce floating over a thick, purple substance. She placed her hands over her hips and _glared_, and the two of them stepped backward. "That dessert is a Prussian delicacy! Do you know how long it took to track down some of those ingredients? Some were mail-ordered -"

"Told you," Drake said with smug satisfaction catered especially to Josh.

Josh grit his teeth. "_Not the time!_"

"- from China ! Your father was hoping to extend his weather forecast by adding a segment featuring animal forecasters. When he finds out about this –"

As if on cue, Dad walked through the door, humming to a wine glass his hand.

"Hey, do you know if we have anymore of that -" he said before looking up and consequentially going white.

Josh knew with every stretch of his being that he should look away before they saw something in his eyes, but the situation had his head in its clutches and was keeping his eyes soldered to Dad - Dad who, with a jerky motion, turned and walked straight back out into the living room.

"Well, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be," Drake said in awed tones.

And too soon. Dad walked right back through the still-swinging door, this time accompanied by the air of an incensed rhinoceros.

"Josh. _Drake," _he warned.

"Ah, what fine names you two have chosen for us," Drake suggested hurriedly. "Dignified. _Trend-setting._ Some would even say –"

"Can it," Dad said, looking pointedly at Josh, who took the moment to shriek. Just a bit and in a manly way, though.

"_Three hundred and ninety-six dollars_," he said heatedly, rebuke beginning with how much money they'd cost him. Josh knew it'd be down to a psychological toll in just a few moments.

Dad was good.

When he finished, he clasped his hands together in a negotiating manner and said hopefully, "OK. OK, now you can't have ruined everything."

Nobody spoke, and he consequentially deflated. "You've ruined everything. OK," he said again. "Here's what we're going to do: I want you boys to go down to that specialty market a few blocks away –"

"No way," Drake piped up. "You mean the one that smells like old salami?"

"Let me rephrase that," Dad said. "You _will_ go to the specialty market a few blocks away and replace those ingredients."

"You said you mail-ordered a few," Josh put in skeptically, to which Drake leaned in close to whisper another "Told you," and Josh had to hiss, "Grow up!"

"I know. But obviously there's no time to do that, so you're going to have to go and see if there's something you can substitute. Take the recipe and ask the shop owner, or if worse comes to worst, find something already prepared. I'll stall a bit more while you boys go." He grabbed Mom by the arm, looking madly desperate and a little insane around the eyes. "Honey, please tell me you have more flesh-eating ant stories."

"I – yes, Walter," she relented, patting him soothingly on the arm. "Yes, I have more ant stories."

* * *

All reviews greatly appreciated! ;D


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes: **I said I wouldn't, but I caved and did a Drake PoV. Josh's perspective just wasn't working out for this chapter.

Also, I realize it has been an insanely long time since I have updated, though I promise I will_ not_ give up on this story. There should only be about two chapters left, and I want to finish them before January.

And **thank you** so much, those of you who took your time to review. I really appreciate it. :)

This chapter is dedicated to _eumonigy_, because she is awesome and not at all cruel to me in any way. At all!

**Disclaimer: **Clearly I am Dan Schneider, and this entire story is just an afterthought. :3 Or I just lied.

* * *

**III.**

Something told Drake that Josh wasn't really feelin' the Drake Vibe.

Drake had considered--fleetingly, of course--that this was a possibility before he'd though about it realistically: he was _Drake._

Being Drake transcended all boundaries regarding race, religion, social standing, _and_ sexual orientation. (Sexual Orientation being the one orientation Drake would actually attend without ending up unconscious in a puddle of his own drool.)

Drake hadn't exactly _pursued_ anyone in the last category, of course, though his mind couldn't quite conjure up a good reason why Josh would work differently from the many girls he'd dated.

For one thing, girls were Drake's specialty, and this was _Josh_. Josh was already bordering a bit on girly, what with his emotions always resting at their peak and the way he had cucumber melon lotion at the ready for when he had what Josh called a Skin Crisis.

For another, Josh already shelled out the cash for most of Drake's dates, even if he was slightly unaware of his contributions. So Josh'd finally be getting the full-on Drake Experience for his generous donations, and not just in way that would prompt Josh to blurt, "Don't you dare serve me that with those hands, mister! I walked in on you and Polka Dot Panties earlier, and my eyes_ burned!_" when they ran into each other in the kitchen.

They would still be what they had always been; they would still be Drake and Josh. Only things would be colored a bit differently, reshaped, switched up. _Sexed up_.

If Drake were entirely honest with himself, though, he'd say his plan wasn't going as well as he'd expected. This was demonstrated in the way Josh had grunted his assurance that he couldn't even look at Drake and then got all spasmodic when he did it anyway.

Drake had just thrown himself into Walter's car, taken the wheel, and held on tight.

There _was_ something that made Josh different. It was that he actually made Drake care about how things turned out. There were actually things like _feelings_ and _thinking_ involved, not just grabbing and kissing and "Hey, we're both hot here. You up for some Drake Time?"

The inside of Walter's car was burning up from the heat outside, like the hot, soupy breath of someone he really had no desire of knowing. Josh had taken the passenger seat and tucked his hands firmly under his armpits as he conducted a surly investigation of the now-passing scenery.

Drake immediately stretched an arm over toward the air conditioning knobs, because sweat would really only make the situation worse.

It seemed Josh had gotten the same idea, because as soon as he reached out, he felt his fingers brush Josh's skin. The contact left a hot patch of Drake's hand buzzing, and Josh jerked away as if Drake had shocked him.

There was a moment when they were both entirely still, and his eyes darted between Josh and the black, plastic knobs. He could see Josh doing the same, coldly calculating.

They reached at the same time, hitting and swatting at the others' hands as if it were some poor, unsynchronized choreography they hadn't gotten the hang of in time for the performance.

Drake sucked in a breath then and knocked Josh's hand away hard, going for the knobs on the AC with an exasperated "_Dude_!"

They pulled up in front of the store almost twenty minutes later.

Walter? Not so good with distance. A few blocks his ass. They'd be closer hopping borders and swimming to Africa or wherever it was the stuff they were after came from.

Drake turned to say this to Josh, his words freezing on his lips and dropping to the ground to shatter like ice. Josh had his arms crossed high over his chest, glaring out the window like someone had just killed his pet turtle in front of him.

Drake turned the key in the ignition, killing the engine. "You comin' in, or am I gonna have to roll down the windows part way so you can stick your nose out and sniff the air?" Drake quipped.

He let the keys jangle over his palm, clinging to the sound like a reprieve.

Josh looked over at him and stared blankly. "Cute," he muttered before turning to look back out the window. "You just go by yourself. I won't be any use anyway."

Drake undid his seatbelt. "Alright man," he said in a teasing, you-don't-know-what-you're-missing tone. "But when will you ever get the chance to see such fine foreign confections all in one place?"

"Don't go acting like everything's peachy between us," Josh spat. "I'm still not–-I don't even know how to deal with you right now or how you can act so-–" He stopped, inhaled heavily. "You know what? Just go. Mom and dad are waiting. Or do you care about anybody but yourself?"

There was a silence and a crack of upholstery as Josh shifted, and Drake stared at Josh like he was incredibly stupid.

"Dude, _c'mon_," Drake answered.

"_Well_?"

Drake responded by opening his door.

The sun had set, and a few stars were peeking through the ink-blue like tiny, silver inlays on a new fretboard. After slamming the door, Drake poked his head back into the car, hands clutching the edge of the rolled-down window.

He opened his mouth to speak, though barely a syllable had a chance to flee his tongue before Josh started running his mouth. "Ok, you've got step one complete: gettin' out of the car. Now if you'll get onto step two—"

"Walter gave you the cash, remember?" Drake asked, congratulating himself on effectively shaving off the rough edges--the hurt—in his voice like they were curling tendrils of soap.

Without looking at Drake, Josh reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a stack of bills, folded over and curling lightly at the edges.

"Here's the money. And I don't see why you can't just call him_ dad_, Mr. Cool Guy. Like it would kill you to give him just a little more respect."

Josh _really_ didn't know how to hold his tongue.

Drake grabbed a hold of Josh then, swiping at him like he was going for the money and instead took a firm grasp on his wrist.

"Hey, hands off!" he said, glaring at Drake's hand around his wrist. "In case you haven't noticed, this isn't the best time for you to be getting' grabby, _Grabby_."

"Because he's not my dad," Drake answered clearly. "I--I don't not love the guy, and he may be the closest thing I've got to an actual dad, but he's yours, Josh." He paused again. "He's _your_ dad. And we're not blood related. Get that through your head so you can stop using it."

Josh looked at him levelly, mouth moving tightly like he were shredding his ensuing words between his teeth.

"Our parents are waiting," Josh replied tersely, jerking his arm out of Drake's grasp and flinging the money onto the driver's seat.

Drake leaned farther in and swiped it up before turning on his heel to make the unfortunate trek to find out just why this specialty market smelled like old salami.

-

It turned out they didn't sell salami at all.

Or at least Drake didn't see any, if that was anything to go by. He did, however, see a few things that would put him off junk food for a month. A week.

OK, he'd be scarfing down a Nutty Ho Ho as soon as he was home.

"So you want all of this?" the woman at the register asked him as she went over the list. Her voice was thick with accent and maybe a little phlegm. Josh had always said languages and accents were the different colored threads in the beautifully diverse quilt of humanity, but Drake thought maybe her part of the quilt wasn't so pretty.

She looked at him shrewdly from behind the counter, her little pinched face framed by hanging nets filled with things red and yellow and green that Drake had never even seen before. There were also hanging vines with dry, crisp leaves so she kind of looked to be staring out from inside a wildly decorated bush.

"Yeah, and if you could possibly hurry it up a bit, I really have to get home with this before-–"

"We do not have any of it but for the oldton seed and pnalton seed extracts."

"I hate those extracts," Drake muttered darkly.

"What?"

"Ah, nothing." The woman was looking at him, eyebrows raised. "Look, do you have anything else? Anything you can substitute or uh, anything already made?" He looked at her with wide, hopeful eyes: women couldn't resist.

She snorted and said something in another language that sounded kind of dirty: that last part made Drake very hopeful.

"This recipe was fashioned for the royalty," she said with disdain. Who spit in her seed extracts? "There is nothing you can merely_ substitute_."

In response, Drake momentarily turned away to give a cough and a roll of his eyes to the tiny, cluttered space. "_OK_, fussy," Drake dragged out before brushing it off. "Then do you have any of it already made?"

She snorted again.

"Oh come on!" Drake pleaded. "Anything I can just slap some frosting on?"

The woman just looked offended at that.

"Look. I know it's kind of asking a lot, seeing as how you're uh—shredding that big, foreign purple thing—"

"It is an eggplant," she interjected dryly.

An egg—_ew._

Drake held a hand up to put a block on her next words and said, quickly as he could: "Yeah, I don't really wanna know about your weird, foreign baby chicken experiments." There was a horrified pause, and then: "It's kind of really important that I get some kind of dessert like, in the next fifteen minutes, though. So if you could point me in the right direction," he said wearily, leaving the last part wide open. She seemed like she'd like that.

"There is a small shop a few blocks from here that sells pre-made confections. Nothing like what you are trying to make." She considered him for a moment.

"Awesome. As long as a few blocks doesn't mean half across San Diego, we're cool. Now where is it?"

She told him. Or started to, but all that passed through Drake then was Josh's voice coming from the front of the store.

"_Drake! _Drake Drake Drake Drake!"

Drake's stomach dropped as he turned. Josh appeared then, hurdling around a cluttered corner and knocking over a stack of boxes.

The woman verbally scolded them, but Drake couldn't comprehend that. Josh was standing before him, obviously spooked.

Drake had his hands out in a second, straining for that reassuring contact, but it was no use. Josh was flailing. "Whoa, whoa,_ whoa_. What happened?"

"There's this guy outside, ok?" Josh started. "He says the car's parked illegally--_illegally_--and that if I don't move the car, he's going to have it towed – towed all the way to where we aren't, and there won't be anything we can do about!"

"Ok, relax." Drake said, walking past Josh and toward the front of the store. "I didn't notice I couldn't park there. Did you move it?"

Apparently a bad question. Josh fumed.

"_No!_" he exploded from behind Drake. Drake could hear his footsteps: hard, sulky stomps accompanied by the water from earlier's disaster squelching in Josh's sneakers. "I mean, you just never _think_, do you? Look at my eyes, Drake! _Just look at them!_ Does this _look_ like sobriety to you?"

Still walking, Drake turned to Josh, who was pointing to a left eye pinkened enough to rival the warm-looking flush trickling up his neck.

Drake stopped, bringing Josh ramming right into him.

"_Ow!" _The sound came very close to his ear. Drake steadied him, both hands on Josh's arms tighter than he meant to hold on. But then Drake always held on too tight. He could feel Josh's skin hot beneath his finger tips.

"You can let me go now!" Josh said, shoving Drake lightly. "And thank you helping me deliver a jab to my own eyeball!"

He pushed past Drake in a huff, straightening his shirt and walking freakishly stiff. Drake followed suit through the maze of hanging herbs and stacked boxes, like traveling through some freakish, foreign jungle.

"Josh," Drake yelled seconds later, right into the back of Josh's neck. Drake'd run right into him when he decided to stop in _another_ doorway. Drake tried to squeeze through some imaginary space between, distantly hoping the shopkeeper wasn't watching them.

"_Dude_!" Drake finally said, throwing his hands up in the air. "If you're going to stand there, we're not going to get to move the car." Josh remained stiff and unmoving as an iron rod. "If you move, I'll give you a foreign biscuit," he said facetiously.

Josh squeaked something that sounded like a rat drowning in a tub. Really, of all things he responds to, it was biscuits? Drake really had to give him a talking-to when--well, when Josh would talk to him again.

"Come again?" Drake asked, his mouth inexplicably dry.

"I said," Josh repeated in an unnaturally contained voice. "We won't be needing to move the car anymore."

"Alright then," Drake said, making his way back into the shop. If the bad man with the tow truck left, he had no reason to complain. "Go back and wait in the car, and I'll be right out. I just have to ask one more – "

That was when he shut his mouth against the words, because it's not easy to talk when your arm is being wrenched from its socket.

"I can't!" Josh said with a cry of great despair. "They already moved the car for us!" With that, Drake was jerked out onto the concrete in front of Josh. He stumbled, but Josh was still holding onto his arm in a vice-like grip.

Drake looked. Drake also widened his eyes in horror and turned back to Josh.

"Oh man, how did that happen?" he pleaded, trying to sort the pieces in his mind. "You didn't even say anything about he tow truck already being there."

He was looking at Josh, pointing to the very empty spot he knew was illuminated by the yellow streetlight. It was burned under his eyelids. He didn't have to look at it again.

"I don't think it was towed." Josh was thrumming, his whole body quivering.

"What do you mean you don't think? What does that_ mean_, Josh?"

"It means, _Drake_," Josh said and then stopped. Then he exploded. "It means I was sittin'--just sittin' and mindin' my own business, because that's my way: I mind my_ own_ business! And--and this guy: _suspicious character, _that one--he came and was all with the hands, and--and I was bamboozled! Oh, and the _keys _and the your fault!"

"What hands? Whoa. Slow down," Drake said. Josh was leaning in the doorway, a hand over half his face. It was swollen red and blistered, and it took Drake a moment to remember why. "You mean to say you left the keys in the car while you came inside to get me?"

"Uh huh," Josh said feebly.

"_Josh_!" he cried, exasperated.

"Oh, no, _mister!_" Josh said, in an ugly, loud voice. He peeled himself from the doorway, coming out onto the sidewalk. Distantly, Drake saw the door to the store slam shut behind them. "You are_ not _putting the blame on me. You wanna know _why_ I couldn't remember to bring the keys with me? It wasn't because I'm Josh the Spazz." He waved his hands in front of him wildly, making his voice shift into a mocking tone at "Josh the Spazz." "It's because _you _– yes, I'm poinin' at _you_, Mister Cool Guy, Mister _Selfish_ – decided to talk me into taking some illegal substance that's got me all befuddled!"

"Hey, you didn't have to do it," Drake said. "It would have been just fine for you to say no."

"Oh, would it?" A pause. "God, that's just _like you_. You badgered me for _weeks_, Drake. And for what? I don't even_ get_ that part. So – so you could somehow _use me _as some relief or something from your crazy girl withdrawals? What? You couldn't dazzle me with your charm, oh godking of makin' out?"

And there it was, something only Josh could twist into something torn and ugly, thrown right in front of him. "That's not fair," Drake said. "You have no idea—"

"And I don't wanna know!"

"Fine!" Drake yelled obstinately. "I don't wanna tell you!"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice was telling him to just _stop it_ before everything that was still holding them up crumbled, but all he knew how to do was keep swinging the hammer. When it came to the two of them, he didn't think either of them knew how to stop.

It wasn't like he was in any danger of doing something as disastrous as actually think on it again. The drug situation Josh was so upset about was supposed to have been a simple, straight path, and _this _was all he got for actually giving it thought.

Because if Drake had genuinely gotten that little nagging—and it was minuscule really; the _pygmy _version of a nag--of uncertainty about Josh's reaction to Drake's _feelings _to quit its relentless race along his mind as if the crevices in his brain were its race track, he would not be in the situation his was in now. It was that uncertain thought that had tumbled face-first into Trevor's excited crow of how easy girls were easier when they were stoned that prompted his plan, because seriously, the drug must have had some power to eliminate all thinking for girls to actually be doin' it with Trevor.

And Josh? Well, Josh was always full of _thoughts_, thoughts that might mess things up for the both of them.

So he figured he'd calm Josh with some grass, confess his not-temporary and entirely manly feelings through an activity of the hot, lip-to-lip variety, and then express that he, Drake Parker, believed Josh could be more than a week.

And then better: that they—him and Josh--could be like extremely hot versions of Bert and Ernie, who were surely hittin' the sack.

But Josh had gone and switched on whatever girl-part he possessed that processed his thoughts to whirl on high so they disobligingly canceled out the weed, and now Drake was pretty sure Josh thought him a _sex maniac_, mostly by the way Josh had shrieked_, Get away from me, Sex Maniac! _when they had left the house.

Usually they got into a lot of unusual situations, but _this_--trying to win back trust when it had been so easy in the beginning and just getting Josh to listen--this wasn't supposed to be a part of it. He told himself he'd never be back there again. But he didn't regret the kiss, and he didn't forget that Josh – just before he turned his mind back on, and even if he wouldn't admit it--had kissed Drake back.

"What're you smiling at?" Josh spat.

"Ah, nothin'," Drake suggested. Josh narrowed his eyes at Drake before he turned on his heel and stalked off. "Now where are you going?"

"I don't want anything to do with this," Josh said matter-of-factly. Drake reached into his back pocket, and that was when he remembered how he'd left his cell phone in their room earlier, how he'd forgotten to grab it after he'd made sure his drawer was as Megan-proofed as possible.

How Josh wouldn't even let them go upstairs to change before they left.

"Hey!" Drake yelled. "Hey! At least let me use your cell phone."

"I can't," Josh screamed. It echoed through the little stone buildings and empty parking lot as he threw his hands up, as if releasing his words into the air. "It's with the suspicious character!"

-

Twenty minutes. That was how long it took to find a payphone that didn't look like it had gotten the worst of a car accident. The foreign woman had locked them out of the store and jabbed the end of a broom through a tiny slot in the front door, threatening to call the police for no reason Drake could understand.

Josh had already gone half a block by then, so Drake ran to catch up and then followed him down a curving few streets sure to get them lost before they came out at a large street with a corner gas station. It was a real classy spot: he could tell by the hobos relieving themselves in the alley and the picket fence across the street that looked like the inside of one of their mouths, missing teeth not excluded.

Josh plopped down onto a concrete parking bumper facing the gas station's worn-looking air compressor as soon as they reached the outer wall of a bathroom and put his head into his hands. The streetlight cast a glow over the tired arch of his back.

"Okay, so now I've only got change for one phone call," Drake said after rummaging in his pockets. He wasn't even going to mention what else he found. "What about you?"

Josh didn't take his head from his hands. "I'm dry, man."

He looked toward the convenience store, taking in the NO CHANGE sign over the glass window.

Like in prison, he supposed one call was going to have to do it for now. At least he had Walter's money to try and buy something if the first attempt didn't work.

The phone receiver was thick with a layer of grease, and there was gum all along the outside of the booth. Drake held his breath as the phone rang; he couldn't have had worse luck.

On the third ring, he was proved wrong.

"Hello?"

"Megan!" he said accusingly. "I thought you were spendin' the night at Janie's."

A sigh. "I was, but then her dad ate a clam and swelled up like a blowfish. They rushed him to the hospital and wouldn't let me stay to watch. Now make whatever it is quick. I'm on the other line."

"Look, Josh and I are stranded somewhere out by that store with the weird, foreign foods."

"The one that smells like old salami?"

"Yeah, that one."

"So get a map. Oh, I forgot. The only map you two have is the one of Boob Land."

"Megan, I'm not playing around. The car's gone, and –"

"You lost _another_ car?"

"No, not _lost_ really. Just kind of taken."

"So…wait," she said, full of dry amusement. He could _hear_ the smirk in her voice. "You mean to tell me that you got the car stolen? _Walter's _car?"

"_Yes_, aren't you paying attention? Now get mom."

"Oh, I'm paying attention, and I'll be paying even more attention when you two are getting grounded for the rest of your sad, boobish existences."

"Hey, you just stay out of this, alright? I don't need you makin' things worse for us with all your feigned innocence."

"Ooh, big word."

"Why thank you," he said sincerely. "See, there were these flash–offs, which at first—"

"And agreed."

"Huh?"

"I'll stay out of it. And I'll start by hanging up this phone."

"No. Megan, don't you dare!"

A short laugh. "Too late."

"_Megan!_"_ Click. _

When Drake replaced the receiver, the only thought that ran through his mind was that he didn't know what he was going to tell Josh, but when Drake settled himself on the curb across from him, he realized he didn't have to.

"Megan?" Josh asked dully.

"Yeah."

"Little demon," he replied in resignation. Silence. "We can call back Collect," Josh suggested quietly.

"No. She's tied up the line."

A long silence coursed through them, the irregular sound of cars flushing down an expressway somewhere nearby the only thing keeping Drake really anchored to the moment. Listening to them then, it wasn't hard to imagine how easy it would be for something to crash.

"Well, c'mon," Drake suggested, more to break the mocking silence. "Maybe we can ask the hobos for change."

Josh just raised an eyebrow and looked back down at the pavement, giving a short, mirthless laugh.

"You wanna ask _hobos_ for money?" he inquired incredulously.

Drake shrugged down at the pavement, which was cracked and mottled with pearly splotches of spilled oil

"I've been thinking," Josh said meekly, as if he didn't want to admit it–-like he didn't think_ all the time._ "And I think I'm going to move into the guest room when we get back."

Drake looked up. Josh's face was pinched in concentration.

"You'd rather share a room with Walter's model train?" he asked incredulously.

Josh looked intently at his blistered hand, eyes heavily hooded. "Would _you_ wanna share a room with you after what you did?"

It was one of those _hypochondriac _questions, Drake knew. He smirked. "Josh, a lot of people would want to share a room with me after –" he stopped himself at the way Josh looked up and quickly changed direction. "So what, are you done with me again?"

"If you don't mind," Josh said, his voice sounding as if it was gaining a bit of fuel between every word. "I'd rather not talk about being _anything_ with you."

Josh bolted from his spot on the cement bumper, and something resonated with him that seemed uncharacteristically dangerous. After a moment he stopped and looked down at Drake as if he couldn't believe Drake's nerve. Something told Drake he should stay seated where he was.

Drake stood up. "So you're just going to stand there and pretend that you didn't like it then?"

"Dude, don't be _disgusting_," Josh said with—well, disgust. Frankly, Drake could have gotten much of the same effect by stepping into the path of oncoming traffic, and even then, maybe his ego wouldn't have had to say 'Ow' so many times. Josh stepped back, almost falling over the bumper, and when Drake reached out to grab his arm, Josh wrenched it back. "I can't believe you. You're so…so –"

"_Disgusting_?" Drake spat, feeling his face boiling. "Spit it out! I don't know why we just can't talk about what happened racially!"

"_Rationally!_" Josh cried, eyes bulging as he swirled his arms about like a spastic spider. "Rationally, rationally, rat-ion-a-lly!" He punctured every syllable with a little dance he didn't seem to be enjoying. "Get a dictionary, whydontcha? Would it kill ya? And we can't talk about it rationally because _you _obviously weren't thinking rationally when – when you went and—when you did the thing that you did!"

"Oh, come on," Drake cried out in exasperation. "Just say it!"

"I can't!"

"_Why not?_"

Josh's mouth moved all out of shape before the subsequent explosion. "Because it's not befitting of a lady!"

Drake threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. "It's not befitting of a lady," he mimicked. "You're _not_ a lady, Josh. Look. What do you _think_ it meant?"

It ought to have been a good question. Josh _liked _thinking.

"Aw, don't you turn this around on me, Drake Parker," Josh said, thrusting a finger toward Drake like it was a taser gun. "Because this is _all_ you! Don't _you_ know what you meant? Do you ever know why'ya do things, Drake, or do ya just operate on little tics to get your jollies?"

"First of all, I don't even know what that means," Drake said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Second, I'm tired of you not giving me any credit."

"Oh, big statement," Josh snarled. "Maybe I'm tired of you, ok? You just went and_ changed_ everything without even considering me! Why can't you just do what you're supposed to?"

He ended it on a pleading note that made Drake's hair stand on end.

"Last I checked," Drake tried to say softly. He wanted to get this right: it was _important_. So obviously his words came out more like a growl. "Your feelings were that you didn't want to be anything with me."

Josh's face very suddenly changed, prompting the momentary thought that Drake had finally broached that outer layer of Josh's stubborn resolve.

"Exactly," Josh agreed vehemently. "Exactly! So nothing. From now on! It meant _nothing_!" Josh said in one violent burst.

Drake very suddenly felt the back of his head collide painfully into the brick wall, bruises blooming darkly before his eyes, so for a moment, he thought Josh was going to punch him. That is, before he felt Josh's lips knock into his. It was the worst and most painful kiss—if it could qualify for that—anyone had given him, exacerbated by the way Josh's hand curled around Drakes forearm like a vice. Josh's injured hand was crushed between them, and before Drake could move against the pain in his head, he tasted blood and Josh was shoving away from him.

"See?" Josh panted, stepping back as if to admire his work. His irises were washed out by tides of black, even under the light. _"Nothing!"_

It was a hell of a lot of nothing then.

Drake was very still, propped against the wall like a broken doll with his only point of motion being his heaving chest. Josh once again ended up sitting on the cement parking bumper in a motion more resembling a fall.

Drake watched him warily, catching his breath.

"So," Drake asked, touching the new split on his lip with the tip of his tongue. "Wanna tell me what that was about?"

All Josh offered was a slight twitch of the hand that was pressed tightly over his mouth. Drake pushed off the wall, the back of his head throbbing lightly, and walked over toward Josh as if he were approaching a wild animal. Josh didn't move, and so Drake sat across from him on the curb once more and couldn't believe he once thought this could be easy.

It was quiet. Everyone thought Drake liked those heated, riotous moments best, but it was really these moments with Josh that made him think he was home.

He could have stayed there, in that one moment suspended, despite all the hurdling disaster. It was almost like the second before a bomb hits: a small peace in something horribly messed up, but it was still, and it was theirs.

Once they got back to their room that night, those moments might not be theirs anymore. They might be his moments and Josh's moments. Separate. Maybe he'd actually screwed up that much.

Josh's breathing was evening out, and the buzzing yellow light nearby cast shadows that tucked themselves into the soft lines of his face, so Drake had to press a smile to his palm.

Josh was pretty.

"Have you heard that one story?" Drake was surprised to hear himself say. "The one about the ant and the grasshopper?"

Josh was looking curiously at him now, an eyebrow cocked in so much incredulity it looked like it was about to shoot off his forehead. "I'd rather not talk about ants anymore, if you please."

"Seriously, man. My mom used to tell it to me all the time."

"She _would_," Josh said, though he seemed to be veiling a certain level of amusement.

"Just listen, dude," Drake said, and Josh acknowledged this by folding his arms across his knees. "Ok, so there's this ant, right? He's always runnin' around like crazy, savin' away–-dirt and stuff or whatever ants eat in the wild-–just so he can survive the winter. Then there's the grasshopper who spends all his time playing the guitar."

"Fiddle," Josh interjected sternly.

"What?"

"The grasshopper doesn't play a guitar, Drake," Josh corrected. He'd always been so picky. "He plays a_ fiddle_."

"Like it matters," Drake muttered, waving a hand airily. "Ok, so the grasshopper plays his _fiddle _all day long, until finally winter comes, and he's just about screwed, right? There're no dirt left for him to eat. But then that same ant comes along and decides the grasshopper's fiddle playing isn't so bad. He kind of _likes_ having someone hot and awesome and who can play the guitar around to keep him company. So the ant makes him an offer. He'll share his dirt with him if the grasshopper plays for him and keeps him company. The grasshopper accepts, and they live happily ever after."

There was long silence as Josh just stared at him.

"Are you done now?" Josh asked.

Drake was pleased with himself. Let Josh poke holes in _that_. "Yeah."

"Ok, so first off," Josh said sarcastically. "The ant never asks the grasshopper to visit the anthill and play _Stairway to Heaven_ for him."

"I didn't say—"

"Sh! _Listen_," Josh said roughly, looking as if he was barely grasping his patience. "Just, for once, _listen_." A beat. "The grasshopper? He starves and freezes to death because he was out havin' a good time while the ant _slaved_ just so he could stay alive. Hard work pays off, Drake. _The Ant and the Grasshopper_ is a fable against idleness."

"Nuh-uh," Drake said sternly. He knew he had this one right; his mom used to tell him all the time. "That's _not_ the way I heard it."

"Well, tough cucumbers, because that's how it happened!" Josh insisted.

They both silently fumed in each others' general directions.

"Ok," Josh said, and for a moment it sounded like he would relent. "So say it did happen that way. The grasshopper only stayed with the ant because he was _starving_ and had no place to go!"

"Now that's stupid," Drake argued.

"Oh, _really?_"

"_Really_," Drake fumed back. "That grasshopper had_ tons_ of other offers, ok? Offers from other ants. Even some _squirrels._ The point is that the grasshopper could have had anyone he wanted, but he chose to stay with that twitchy, stubborn ant!"

"That's beautiful."

It was exactly what Drake wanted to hear. Unfortunately, the sound had resonated from behind him, and Drake wheeled around to see a hobo about the size of a refrigerator leaning against the wall behind him.

"I'm sorry, I just," the hobo fumbled, plucking at the striped sleeve of his filthy shirt. When he looked up, his eyes were wide and hopeful and fixed on Drake. "Would you like to dance?"

"Uh--I--" Drake replied as he stood, stepping back in time with every opportunity his voice took to stumble over itself. "I'm gonna have to go with--"

He hit a fleshy sort of wall then and immediately relaxed under the touch.

"Back away slowly," Josh instructed close to his ear, and they moved backwards together, easily avoiding tripping over the cement bumper. "Okay," Josh continued slowly. "Now back away much faster."

They turned and ran.

They didn't stop until they emerged from a street to reach the glowing bustle of the expressway. There was a woman at the corner, leaning up against the street sign.

"Amazon," Drake panted, pointing in her direction. He felt a sharp pitch of pain in the back of his head and used the hand to massage the spot instead.

"Look," Josh replied, sounding ruffled. He was still bent and heaving. "I know you're probably trying to make a point about where you stand with the womenfolk right now, but this is _not_ the time to be sayin' things about the locals!"

"No, dude," Drake said in exasperation, gesturing to the sign. "The street name. _Amazon._"

Josh stood slowly and looked up. "So you can read," he commented dryly.

"_Whatever_. Look, I passed through here the time Trevor and I—" Drake stopped. It was probably better not to get into what he and Trevor were up to. "Dude," Drake said instead. "I know where we are."

* * *

Thanks for reading!


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